Dash as default shell

[Daniel P. Berrange]

On Thu, Oct 02, 2014 at 08:07:14AM -0500, Chris Adams wrote:
> Once upon a time, Richard W.M. Jones <rjones at redhat.com> said:
> > Changing the default /bin/sh is going to break the world.
> 
> [citation needed]
> 
> Anything that depends on bash as /bin/sh is already getting Fedora
> specific.  Debian/Ubuntu don't use bash as /bin/sh for years, and none
> of the other major Unix-like systems (e.g. *BSD, Solaris, etc.) have
> ever used bash as /bin/sh.
> 
> To say "it is a lot of work" or "is going to break the world", the
> requirement for proof is on you.

Yep, I'm pretty sceptical that it would be alot of work because the
vast majority of programs have long ago dealt with the pain in order
to run on Debian correctly.  The only areas I'd see it being a problem
is in Fedora/RHEL specific code. Stuff like initscripts (thankfully
almost all killed due to systemd) and ifcfg-XXX network scripts (still
around but mostly irrelevant if you are willing use NetworkManager).

I'd be curious of the results if someone wants to take a stock Fedora 21
install and switch /bin/sh to point to dash and report if they can still
boot & login to GNOME.

I recently tried to change /bin/sh to point to /bin/false and the distro
was still surprisingly functional, against thanks to systemd removing
most use of shell from the boot process. The big problems with dhclient
spawning shell script, plymouth graphical boot, ssh key generation
and something I didn't investigate in X / GDM login.

Regards,
Daniel
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